Understanding how advocacy services support care-experienced young people to participate in decision-making

Legacy Content

This project or publication was produced before or during the merger of What Works for Children’s Social Care (WWCSC) and the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF).

October 7, 2024

Understanding how advocacy services support care-experienced young people to participate in decision-making

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Summary

This report presents findings from a realist-informed study on the Rights and Participation Service (RAPS), an in-house advocacy service within Birmingham Children’s Trust. This study aims to understand how advocacy services support care-experienced young people to participate in decision-making and develops an initial theory of how, why and under what circumstances RAPS facilitates participation, represents young people’s interests and contributes to positive outcomes. Resulting practice recommendations and a ‘good practice framework’ offer guidance around implementing advocacy services such that they are grounded in lived experience.

Aims

This study sought to explore the following research questions:

How do those who deliver, refer into and receive advocacy services in the participating children’s service think they work, and for whom?
How might the advocacy service empower or enable care-experienced children and young people to play a meaningful role in decision-making about their lives?
How can data from one advocacy service be used to inform the collaborative development of a framework for practice to support the delivery of advocacy services more widely for care-experienced children and young people?

Method

This study employed a qualitative approach, and collated available research evidence using the following activities:

Interviews with operational staff
Focus groups with advocates, care experienced young people, and key stakeholders
Theory testing via follow-up interviews
Theory consolidations through collaborative workshops.

Key Findings

The following key themes emerged from the interviews and focus groups:

Participation and decision-making
The advocacy role itself
Trust and relationship-building
Key service delivery elements

These themes shaped the analysis and understanding of key components, mechanisms, and contextual factors influencing the advocacy service and its participatory approach.

The Initial Programme Theory (IPT) identified advocacy service components enabling participation in decision-making; the organisational culture, in-house resourcing model, information provision and relationships building. Key mechanisms theorised as critical for translating service activities into meaningful participation outcomes include:

Building trusting relationships through consistent communication and decision-making
Facilitating power-sharing by placing young people in tangible decision-making roles
Promoting ownership by demonstrably valuing ideas put forward CYP and allowing them to see the impact of their involvement.

Cultivating accountability via clear communication channels and responsiveness to feedback.

While the IPT provides an important starting point for understanding the RAPS advocacy service, further research is needed to refine and validate the theory. The complex service environment means the transferability of findings to other advocacy models should be approached cautiously. Ongoing multi-method research across different provisions would strengthen the evidence base to systematically identify what works, for whom, and under what conditions.

Implications for Policy

Several priority areas for policy and practice recommendations emerge from this preliminary analysis of an in-house advocacy programme. These include

Awareness building through targeted outreach and communication
Flexibility in service delivery to accommodate diverse needs and preferences
Embedding youth participation in governance and oversight
Facilitating relationship-building opportunities beyond formal advocacy
Aligning practices with the good practice framework developed as a part of this research
Committing to accessibility, responsivity, creativity and relationship building.